5. Medieval Landownership and the Bourgeois Revolution

The question now arises whether there are material grounds in the economic
conditions of the agrarian, bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia
compelling the small proprietors to demand the nationalisation of the land, or
whether this demand as well is merely a phrase, merely the pious wish of the
ignorant muzhik, the vain dream of the patriarchal tiller of the soil.

To answer this question we must first try to envisage more concretely
the conditions of a bourgeois-democratic revolution in agriculture, and
then compare those conditions with the two paths of capitalist
agrarian evolution that are possible in Russia, as we have outlined above.

The conditions of the bourgeois revolution in agriculture from the
standpoint of agrarian relations have been very strikingly dealt with by
Marx in the last volume of Theories of Surplus Value (Theorien
über den Mehrwert, II. Band, 2. Teil, Stuttgart, 1905).

After examining the views of Rodbertus, exposing the great limitations
of the theory of this Pomeranian landlord, and enumerating in detail every
single manifestation of his stupidity (II, 1. Teil, S. 256-58, erster
Blödsinn— sechster Blödsinn des Herrn
Rodbertus[1]
),
Marx turns to Ricardo’s theory of rent (II, 2. Teil, § 3b,
“The Historical Conditions of Ricardo’s ,
Theory”).[5]

Speaking of Ricardo and Anderson, Marx says: “Both start out from the
view, regarded as very strange on the Continent:
(1) that no landed property exists as an obstacle to any investment of
capital in the land;
(2) that there the tillers pass from better to worse soils. For Ricardo
this premise is absolute—leaving out of account interruptions in
development through the reaction of science and industry; for Anderson it
is relative, since the worse soil is again transformed into better;
(3) that capital, the mass of capital requisite for application to
agriculture, is always available.

“Now, as far as points 1 and 2 are concerned, it must appear very
peculiar to those on the Continent that in the country where, according to
their notions, feudal landed property has been most strongly preserved,
economists start out from the idea that landed property does not
exist. Anderson does so as well as Ricardo. The explanation is as follows:

“first, the peculiarity of the English law of
enclosures’
[i.e., the law relating to the enclosure of the common lands] which has
absolutely no analogy with the continental division of common land.

“secondly, nowhere in the world has capitalist production,
since Henry VII, dealt so ruthlessly with the traditional relations of
agriculture and so adequately moulded its conditions and made them subject
to itself. England is in this respect the most revolutionary country in the
world. All historically inherited relations—not only the position of
the villages, but the very villages themselves, not only the habitations of
the agricultural population, but this population itself, not only the
ancient economic centres, but the very economy itself—have been
ruthlessly swept away where they were in contradiction to the conditions of
capitalist production in agriculture, or did not correspond to those
conditions. The German, for example, finds economic relations determined by
the traditional common land relations [Feldmarken], the position
of economic centres, and particular conglomerations of the population. The
Englishman finds that the historical conditions of agriculture have been
progressively created by capital since the fifteenth century. The technical
expression customary in the United Kingdom, the ‘clearing of estates’, does
not occur in any continental country. But what does this ‘clearing of
estates’ mean? It means that, without regard for the local
population—which is driven away, for existing villages—which
are levelled to the ground, for farm build ings—which are torn down,
for the kind of agriculture— which is transformed at a stroke, being
converted for example from tillage to pasture, all conditions of
production, instead of being accepted as they are handed down by
tradition, are historically fashioned in the form necessary under
the circumstances for the most profitable investment of capital. To that
extent, therefore, no landed property exists; it allows
capital—the farmer—to manage freely, since it is only concerned
about the money income. A Pomeranian landowner, his mind full of his
ancestral [angestammten] common lands, economic centres, and the
agricultural collegium, etc., is quite likely, therefore, to hold up his
hands in horror at Ricardo’s ‘unhistorical’ views on the development
of agricultural relations. That only shows that he naively confuses
Pomeranian and English conditions. But it cannot be said that Ricardo, who
here starts out from English conditions, is just as narrow in his view as
the
Pomeranian landowner who thinks within the limits of Pomeranian
conditions. The English conditions are the only ones in which modern landed
property, i.e., landed property modified by capitalist production,
has developed adequately (in ideal perfection). Here the English theory is
the classical one for the modern, i.e., capitalist mode of production. The
Pomeranian theory, on the other hand, judges the developed relations
according to a historically lower (inadequate) form, which has not taken
full shape” (S. 5-7).

That is a remarkably profound argument by Marx. Have our
“municipalisers” ever pondered over it?

In Volume III of Capital (2. Teil, S. 156) Marx had al ready pointed
out that the form of landed property with which the incipient capitalist mode of
production is con fronted does not suit capitalism. Capitalism
creates for itself the required forms of agrarian relationships out of
the old forms, out of feudal landed property, peasants’ commune property, clan
property,
etc.[6] In that chapter, Marx compares the different methods
by which capital creates the required forms of landed property. In Germany
the reshaping of the medieval forms of landed property proceeded in a
reformative way, so to speak. It adapted itself to routine, to tradition,
to the feudal estates that were slowly converted into Junker estates, to
the routine of indolent
peasants[2]
who were undergoing the difficult transition from corvée
to the condition of the Knecht and Grossbauer. In England this reshaping
proceeded in a revolutionary, violent way; but the violence was practised for
the benefit of the landlords, it was practised on the masses of the peasants,
who were taxed to exhaustion, driven from the villages, evicted, and who
died out, or emigrated. In America this reshaping went on in a violent way as
regards the slave farms in the Southern States. There violence was applied
against the slaveowning landlords. Their estates were broken up, and the large
feudal estates were
transformed into small bourgeois
farms.[3]
As regards the mass of “unappropriated” American lands, this
role of creating the new agrarian relationships to suit the new mode of
production (i.e., capitalism) was played by the “American General
Redistribution”, by the Anti-Rent movement
(Anti-Rent-Bewegung) of the forties, the
Homestead Act,[7] etc. When, in 1846, Hermann Kriege, a German
Communist, advocated the equal redistribution of the land in America, Marx
ridiculed the Socialist-Revolutionary prejudices and the petty-bourgeois
theory of this quasi-socialism, but he appreciated the historical
importance of the American movement against landed
property,[4]
as a movement which in a progressive way expressed the interests of the
development of the productive forces and the interests of capitalism in
America.

Notes

[2]SeeTheorien über den Mehrwert, II. Band, 1. Teil,
S. 280; the condition for the capitalist mode of production in agriculture
is “the substitution of a businessman [Geschäftsmann] for
the indolent
peasant”.[8] —Lenin

[3]See Kautsky’s Agrarian Question (p. 432, et seq. of the
German text) concerning the growth of the small farms in the American South
as a result of the abolition of slavery. —Lenin

[4]Vperyod, 4905, No. 45 (Geneva, April 7/20), article
“Marx on the American ‘General Redistribution’". (See present
edition, Vol. 8, pp. 323-29.— Ed.) (Second volume
of Mehring’s Collected Works of Marx and Engels.) “We
fully recognise,” wrote Marx in 1846, “the historical
justification of the movement of the American National Reformers. We know
that this movement strives for a result which, true, would give a temporary
impetus to the industrialism of modern bourgeois society, but which, as a
product of the proletarian movement, and as an attack on landed property in
general, especially under the prevailing American conditions, must
inevitably lead, by its own consequences, to communism. Kriege, who with
the German Communists in New York joined the Anti-Rent-Bewegung (movement),
clothes this simple fact in bombastic phrases, without entering into the
content of the
movement.”[9] —Lenin

[7]The Homestead Act—a law passed in the United States in
1862 granting settlers a plot of land up to 160 acres free of charge or at
a nominal price. This land became the private property of its holder after
five years.